As a full-time travel blogger, we travel a lot around the world. Over time, we have not only minimized our luggage, but above all perfected it. The result: We travel incredibly comfortably and have found the perfect travel gadgets for us, without which we do not even travel.
And this article deals exactly with these travel gadgets. Here we present you our 8 best travel utensils, without which we would never travel again.
They help us to pack and to be more comfortable on the way and they give us security on the way.
If you want to know with which luggage we normally travel, read our packing list for city trips and our packing list for Southeast Asia or warm countries. There we will list all our luggage down to the last detail.
This article is about the little helpers in our luggage who often make life much easier for us and sweeten our journeys. Let’s go.
Travel safe
What’s a travel safe?
Our travel safe is a wire reinforced bag from the company Pacsafe, which you simply tie to a fixed object in your hotel room with a steel cable and a combination lock.
Why is the Pacsafe an ingenious travel gadget?
We are really not security fanatics and believe that you should use your common sense when travelling to be safe.
In fact, too many security measures are more likely to attract attention than normal behaviour. Do you know the people who carry their backpacks at the front of their chest or the people who cling to their handbag in a convulsive way?
If we were pickpockets, we would be most likely to notice these people. Because they definitely have something in their pockets that is very important to them.
We don’t carry our valuables around with us in the first place, but leave them in our travel safe in the hotel. You wonder why we have our own safe when most hotel rooms have a safe?
Of course, it always depends on how you travel. If you only spend your holiday in high-priced hotels, then you shouldn’t have to worry about your valuables in the hotel room.
But even in expensive hotels it is often the case that the safe is far too small and for example two laptops don’t fit into it at all.
But if you spend the night in good middle-class hotels, like us, you don’t always have a safe available.
Having a safe in your hotel may also be standard in most European countries. But that doesn’t mean it’s standard worldwide. That’s why we simply don’t want to miss our Pacsafe anymore.
We simply tie our 12 litre Pacsafe to a fixed object in the hotel room using the steel rope. You then close the whole system with a combination lock, which is also very practical, because you don’t have to watch out for a key!
Most thefts take place out of opportunity and this is exactly what we don’t offer because we lock our valuables away in our travel safe.
The 12 litre Pacsafe costs around 70 euros. That’s a small amount to make us feel safe for years.
We never worry that anything will happen to our valuables. At the beginning we never thought that the Pacsafe would grow so close to our hearts, but it is and we always have it with us.
It is also available with 5 litres. If, like us, you don’t have laptops, hard drives, etc. with you, the 5 litre Pacsafe might even be enough for about 55 Euros.
By the way, we always put it on top of the things in the backpack or suitcase as the very last thing to do when packing. So it doesn’t even take up any space.
Travel pillow
Do you know the problem that the pillows in the hotel room or in the holiday apartment are simply not as comfortable as your home?
Especially in Southeast Asia the pillows are often rock hard. Terrible!
If you can sleep on any pillow, no matter how soft, hard, high or low, then you can scroll straight to the next travel gadget.
But if you know the problem and would like to have a solution, then read on here and let us tell you how Jenny solved the problem for you.
Jenny is a belly sleeper and if you are, you probably know the problem with the too high or too hard pillow only too well.
Sleep is important and there is hardly anything more annoying on vacation or travel than to start the day unawake. Before we packed our backpacks in 2015 and left our rented apartment in Berlin for an indefinite time, Jenny searched for the perfect travel pillow for her in countless outdoor shops.
She found it and now actually sleeps even with her parents on her travel pillow rather than on her own pillow.
The pillow is available in several sizes. Jenny has the size S and for her the width and also the height is just right. The company Therm-a-Rest is mainly known for its insulating mats. And if we have understood this correctly, the remnants from the production of the insulating mats are recycled for the filling of the pillow.
The cushion is nicely soft, but offers exactly the right resistance for sleeping. You can simply roll it up for transport and it will shrink to a quarter of its normal size. After you open it again, the filling inflates.
It is also really good that you can simply throw the pillow into the washing machine and dryer. After drying, it’s even extra fluffy!
Jenny loves her pillows and doesn’t travel anywhere without them anymore. And the pillow is a real bargain. Depending on color and size it costs between 18 and 40 euros. Jenny’s blue pillow in size S costs about 24 Euro.
Silicone bottles
Our refillable silicone bottles for shampoo, conditioner and shower gel are definitely among the most useful travel gadgets we have on the road.
We bought ours about 3 years ago, travel the world with them 356 days a year and so far they haven’t let us down.
They are super easy to fill, for cleaning we just put them in the dishwasher from time to time. It couldn’t be easier!
In the beginning we always bought plastic bottles from DM or Rossmann, which were broken after a holiday at the latest.
Not very sustainable and to be honest also annoying.
For about 16 Euro you get four of the silicone bottles. We only have three of them in use and if one breaks, we can replace it with the fourth bottle.
The bottles are a super simple, but at the same time extremely useful travel gadget, which we don’t want to miss anymore.